Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the (second) beginning:

Crowley's flat was astonishingly empty of comfort. Aziraphale looked around the entryway curiously, the collector in him wondering at the provenance and meaning behind each spotlit object along the wall. More light spilled out from behind a half open door that led into another room, where Aziraphale could just see an ornate table and chair and, strangely, a bucket on its side on the floor next to a discarded coat. There was a lingering smell of brimstone and rot, something remarkably like a stagnant pond, thick and cloying. And under that, the smell of a garden, of every garden he'd ever been in, all of them at Crowley's side.

It was all just so stark. Crowley was a creature of strong opinions and stronger preferences; their emotions spilled out of them, irrepressible and often at maximum volume, with extravagant gestures besides. The flat was...not that. The flat felt like all the lies Crowley implied but didn't actually tell.

Crowley swayed a little, sunglasses dangling loosely in their fingers and eyes half closed, staring blankly in the general direction of the bucket. Aziraphale went to him and took Crowley's cold hand into his own, plucking the glasses free and tucking them away into a pocket of his coat. "You're dead on your feet, dear," Aziraphale said quietly. "Let's get you cleaned up and we'll rest."

He didn't miss the flicker of Crowley's tongue and the way the yellow of their irises had spread to fill the whole of their eyes. They watched Aziraphale silently, glancing from his face down to their clasped hands and back. "'m fine," they said.

"I can see that," said Aziraphale, agreeable and inexorable. "Off we go, then."

Crowley led him carefully past the coat on the floor through an office with the most absurdly ornate chair and table, then past lush, trembling plants and a statue that made Aziraphale raise his eyebrows and hide a smile. There were skylights everywhere and all the blinds were open, letting in the light from outside.

"Let there be light," Crowley said and fumbled at the light switch. The toilet was all cool gray walls, dark tile, and gleaming hardware. Another skylight took up most of the ceiling. It looked much more like a photograph of a bathroom than anything anyone had ever used, which was, of course, largely accurate. And it had one of those funny showers with a million places for water to assault one's body and no tub at all.

"Oh dear," said Aziraphale, at a loss, not for the first time that day.

Crowley blinked, exhausted human slow, and said, "Not good?" They looked around, frowning.

"Not what I was expecting is all," said Aziraphale. Crowley tugged at their clasped hands and, when Aziraphale failed to let go, snapped the fingers on their other hand. A tub blinked into existence, the same neutral gray as everything else, and the rest of the room shifted about, grumbling, to accommodate it.

Crowley made a noise and crumpled to the floor in slow motion, strings cut, graceless, and mumbled, "Better?" at nothing at all.

Aziraphale looked down at them, regret welling up in his chest. He should have just let it be, he thought. Miracled away what Crowley hadn't already.

He knelt next to Crowley, hauling them up enough to begin on divesting them of their clothing. "You are an exceedingly foolish serpent," Aziraphale said, fond and irritated all at once. The edges of their coat crumbled away under Aziraphale's fingers, burnt to ash. Everything was burnt. Crowley was burnt, ash in their hair and small patches of skin coming through red and blistered where their clothes had failed to protect them. Their skin was worryingly cool under Aziraphale's hands.

"This?" said Crowley. "S'nothing. Had far worse, me." They made a sound like a bomb falling, a low whistle followed by the sound of an explosion. They tipped forward at Aziraphale's urging, forehead landing on Aziraphale's shoulder.

"No doubt," said Aziraphale, pushing the coat off Crowley's shoulders. And it was true, he realized. Crowley had survived every fire they'd fallen, sauntered, stumbled, driven, or been thrown into. His fingers felt the fine grit of ash and his eyes denied it. If he closed them, he thought he might be able to find the seams of Crowley's work, where they'd patched over the ragged remnants of their clothes with the reality they preferred. Ridiculous, vain creature to spend so much effort for the appearance of imperviousness.

Unbidden, a memory a thousand and more years old rose up, leviathan-like, of Crowley's hand in Aziraphale's hair while Aziraphale wept furiously on their shoulder. It had smelled the same then, fire and death and the sour staleness of exhaustion. Crowley's presence had been an unexpected and unwanted kindness, a reminder that Aziraphale hadn't been alone in his grief and doubt and rage, however much he'd thought he was.

Aziraphale reached up, tentative, and cupped the back of Crowley's head. He heard their breath hitch before they went beautifully, wonderfully heavy against Aziraphale's shoulder and chest, loose limbed and pliant. I'm here, he wanted to say. I have you. Crowley tucked their head into Aziraphale's neck and Aziraphale stroked the short hairs at the nape of Crowley's neck, saying nothing, content in the moment and afraid to disturb the soap bubble fragile peace.

He could have stayed there forever, Aziraphale thought, a hundred years at least, had Crowley not shifted their weight and said, "ow," in a small enough voice that Aziraphale couldn't help but smile. Aziraphale miracled away the rest of Crowley's clothes to the nearest bin, filled the tub with water just shy of too hot even for them, and deposited Crowley in the bath. He rolled up his sleeves and reached for a flannel and soap, both of which were surprised to find themselves in a bathroom instead of a shelf in a store.

"What are you doing?" asked Crowley. The not entirely idle curiosity in their tone caught at Aziraphale's attention and he glanced over at Crowley's face. Crowley, in turn, watched Aziraphale's hands with all the sharpening focus of a snake that's just realized how vulnerable they've left themselves.

"Er. Cleaning you up?" said Aziraphale. He waved the flannel at them.

"I am clean," said Crowley. And technically, that was true. Crowley had banished the soot and debris they'd arrived at the airfield with. They'd fixed the appearance of their clothing. Most people -- most angels and demons too -- wouldn't have felt the crumbling edges of Crowley's coat; the minor miracle would have rendered it as whole and complete to their fingers as it very likely was to Crowley's^[1].

The simplest miracles, the kind that didn't draw down reprimands and celestial ire, what Crowley laughingly called the alchemical miracles, were the ones that started near to what the desired result was to be. A bottle of reasonably good wine could be easily convinced to dress up and do a turn as a 2009 Clos du Tart. With a little effort, one could turn lead into gold, though why anyone would want to was still beyond Aziraphale's comprehension^[2].

There were exceptions, of course. Things that were simply themselves and no amount of coaxing or nudging or outright demanding could convince them to be otherwise. The Bentley refused any such imposition on its perception of itself. It would allow a temporary addition at Aziraphale's request, sometimes, if it was in the mood, or if Crowley was in the mood to be indulgent, but on the whole it treated miracles as something that happened to lesser objects. Books knew themselves well enough to reject attempts to change them. Miracles slid off older buildings, the ones with a history or the ones that had caught humanity's whimsy, like water off ducks. No amount of effort on Aziraphale's part could turn a child's beloved object into anything except what the child believed it to be.

At any rate, point was this: most things, in Aziraphale's experience, wanted to be better than they were. Broken things wanted to be mended; gross matter sought refinement. Things that had been lost wanted to be found. It was simply a matter of convincing them that they could be.

It took barely a thought to nudge something -- a torn coat, for example -- into remembering what it was to be whole and mended^[3]. Where things became messier was when the memory of destruction was stronger than the one of integrity.

For Aziraphale, Crowley's coat remembered burning and pressed the memory of it into his fingertips until he couldn't feel anything else. Burnt and unburnt, over and over again on the infinite trip between London and Tadfield, subject to Crowley's diamond hard certainty that there was nothing left fire could do to hurt them. Crowley couldn't fully erase the memory of something like that. No one short of God Herself could.

It was the sort of experience that made things refuse to go back to the way they had been; the only way to do anything with them was to accept that they had changed, irrevocably, and remake them in the face of it.

That was the problem with miracles. They were a shortcut: good enough for convenience, sufficient unto the day and all, but they were temporary. Subject to the whims of an indecently contrary universe. For the things that really truly mattered, the things you wanted to last, you couldn't beat the work of your own hands.

"Crowley," Aziraphale said firmly. "Let me do this."

"You could have just stuck me in the shower if you wanted me cleaner," Crowley pointed out reasonably. "Turned the water on." They reached for the flannel in Aziraphale's hand, trying to take it from him. "You don't need to do all this."

He did. Aziraphale tugged the cloth back. "Let me take care of you. This once."

Crowley froze and Aziraphale saw the questions forming -- the why would you and the reflexively suspicious what do you want -- and steeled himself to patience. But then Crowley let go of the flannel and settled back, still looking at Aziraphale warily.

"All right," Crowley said, sounding puzzled. "If that's what--all right."

Aziraphale let himself relax a little, not entirely trusting Crowley to remain gracious. They hated favors; they hated anything and everything they received that so much as hinted it wasn't the result of their own work. Aziraphale had given up on actually handing them a gift after the fifth time he caught Crowley examining it as if expecting a trap^[4].

He tapped Crowley on the knee, definitely not laughing at their awkward, coltish start as if they'd just remembered they even had legs. Instead, Aziraphale slid the cloth around and under Crowley's knee and along their calf and down to their ankle, helping them brace their foot against the side of the tub. "It is what I want," Aziraphale said, setting to washing Crowley's foot.

There was another flicker of Crowley's tongue, forked this time. Scales spread over the arch of their foot and Aziraphale could no more have stopped himself from running a curious finger over them than he could have manifested them himself. Crowley's foot jerked in his hand and Aziraphale moved with it, holding on. "Crowley," he said. "Please."

Crowley subsided again. The scales on their foot were gone as if they'd never been there in the first place. Aziraphale continued, as careful as he'd be with the rarest of books and for the same reasons.

Even in compliance, Crowley managed to disturb Aziraphale's attempts at peace. Why would you, they didn't ask, and Aziraphale wanted to answer anyway. An extraordinary cockup on his part, he wanted to say; an apology for his lack of faith, or an excess of it perhaps, or just the right amount but misplaced; for denying them; for using Crowley's steadfast affection as a lever.

Penitence, he didn't say, and moved on to Crowley's other foot.

"Are you praying?" asked Crowley suddenly, eyes narrowing.

"No," said Aziraphale, who had been not praying exactly, and spent the tiniest fraction of a second terrified he had accidentally blessed the water. The cold jolt of fear and adrenaline spread across the back of his shoulders and down his arms, setting his hands to shaking and ignoring how ridiculous he was being.

"You get all—" Crowley motioned at their own face in a way they clearly thought meant something, oblivious to Aziraphale's sudden trembling. "when you pray."

"I am an angel," Aziraphale said. Crowley was fine. The bath water wasn't holy. "I don't need to pray." No need to mention how poorly the last attempt had gone. He ran the cloth over Crowley's absurdly knobby knees with more vigor than he'd intended and immediately felt terrible about it.

"Didn't say you needed to, just that you were."

"Well, I'm not," Aziraphale said. He dragged the cloth up the length of Crowley's thigh, focusing on the very real, very not dead, very, very dear demon under his hands. More scales crawled over Crowley's hip and up their belly, covering another burn.

It was just that he'd imagined this very thing when Crowley had first asked. A bath or perhaps just a glass, more innocent than brandy. Would boiling it for tea have rendered the blessing moot? He had imagined it a dozen different ways after he'd gone to Crowley's townhome and been turned away, a hundred more after he'd returned a month later and found someone not Crowley in residence. After handing over the thermos, he'd imagined himself there with Crowley, pouring the water himself.

Crowley hissed and the scales slipped away again, taking the burn with them. Aziraphale laid his hand against where the burn and scales had been and felt only whole skin underneath his fingers.

"You can change, if it will help," said Aziraphale.

Crowley shook their head, mouth thinned and frowning. "It won't."

They lapsed into silence. Aziraphale finished washing Crowley's stomach and chest and shoulders, reaching around to urge them forward so he could get at their back. "I don't think I've seen you change in years."

"Two thousand, give or take some decades," Crowley said vaguely^[5]. Their eyes were still edge to edge yellow, half lidded and slit pupiled, still watching Aziraphale. "It's simple to be a snake."

Aziraphale wrung out the flannel. "That doesn't seem to be too terrible a thing. Close your eyes, dear."

Crowley did. Aziraphale tilted their head up, cleaning away the last traces of soot and ash from Crowley's face. So softly it might have gone unheard by anyone else, they said, "I'm afraid I won't want to come back."

"Oh," said Aziraphale quietly. Crowley nodded and sighed; Aziraphale felt them relax a touch more, their head heavier in Aziraphale's hands. "Just a bit more," he said and poured water over Crowley's hair, combing through it with his fingers.

Something in Crowley's wordless hum of approval and the quiet, trusting weight of them scooped the remaining nervous fear out of his chest. Crowley was clean and whole, their burns healed, and they'd let go of making it look like the day hadn't touched them. Aziraphale set the water to drain and miracled in a bath towel, patting Crowley dry. They grumbled but let themselves be half-carried out of the tub and down the hall.

One of the doors swung open as they passed, which Aziraphale took as both direction and invitation. Sure enough, he found a bed – as lush and over the top as he would have expected from Crowley – and helped them into it, arranging the covers to his satisfaction. "There now," he said, pleased.

"Aziraphale," Crowley said, voice scratchy with exhaustion. They reached out, circling Aziraphale's wrist with their long fingers and pulling him closer. "I can't promise we're safe here."

"I can," said Aziraphale, kneeling beside the bed, stomach twisting at-- at looming over Crowley, too close to the memory of Crowley brought to their knees all unwilling.

"They're going to come for us."

Agnes' last prophecy was in Aziraphale's pocket. "I know. I'll think of something," he said, refusing to let himself believe otherwise. "We're going to dine at the Ritz tomorrow."

Crowley's face did the funny little thing they'd been doing for centuries, hiding a smile somehow in the downturned corners of their mouth. "Yeah?"

"Yes," he said firmly. "I've been wanting to try the sole. And you are going to try that tawny port you've been eyeing."

"All right," Crowley said after a moment, sounding as certain as Aziraphale had ever heard them. "Fantastic. Lunch at the Ritz tomorrow."

Aziraphale was helpless against the sudden, fierce tenderness that welled up in him at Crowley's agreement; it was the sort of sentiment that Gabriel dismissed as tawdry and unbecoming: too rich and textured, too messy to fit in with the cool, sleek lines and minimal decor of Heaven. Carried along by the rush of it, he reached out and touched the expressive arch of Crowley's eyebrow and traced the serpent looping infinity at Crowley's temple with careful fingers.

He pressed his lips to Crowley's forehead, as gentle as he knew how and Crowley sighed and said, in tones of deep resignation, "Really, angel."

"Hush you, let me have this," said Aziraphale, resting his forehead against Crowley's and trusting to the loose clasp of Crowley's fingers around his wrist. "Are you all right, truly?"

"Tired," they said. Then, nonsensically, "you're alive."

"We both are," agreed Aziraphale. It had been so near a thing, subject to the grace of one human boy and his friends, children wielding the power of their belief in ought to be against humanity's nightmares. Witches armed with irony brought destruction to a halt. And there was the two of them, bumbling through what was written in a desperate attempt to buy more time. It had so nearly gone pear shaped.

But he was alive. Crowley was alive. All Aziraphale had to do was keep them so. Admittedly, his track record as a guardian was not confidence inspiring, but he rather thought he could handle one mercurial serpent.

"Good," said Crowley, closing their eyes. "That's good."

And it was.

¹Aziraphale's main miraculous skill set was in the mending of things. As with blessings, he could see very well what was needful, where things were broken and how to set them right again. What he never admitted to, especially not to himself, was the corollary to this: that he could look at a thing and see the faults in it, the fragile places where it might break. Both skills were quite useful in situations where one needed to, as for totally irrelevant example, very quickly make a hole in a very large wall, and fix it up again after.^{[return to text]}

²Crowley had done it once as a parlor trick in front of some very impressionable philosophers. They might as well have written "to the most gullible" and spared Aziraphale literal centuries of nonsense.^{[return to text]}

³The problem for Aziraphale was that he couldn't stop seeing the ways a miracle had intervened. It was well enough to do for other people, who'd carry it away from him and his stubborn belief that he could improve on whatever it was he'd done and it was utterly lovely when someone else did it for him, where he could look on it and remember a kindness, but he'd worry at anything he'd done for himself until there was more miracle than reality.^{[return to text]}

⁴Aziraphale had taken to forgetting things in the Bentley instead. For some reason Aziraphale had never been able to reason out, Crowley regarded these as fair game and would claim them greedily enough.^{[return to text]}

⁵Crowley knew very well it had been 2048 years. What they couldn't remember were the three weeks after that, when they'd gotten rotten, stinking drunk in a welter of bitter sympathy and rage and what Aziraphale would have called heartsickness if they'd ever told him about it, which they absolutely hadn't. The most they could remember was a strong urge to lay every curse they knew on Octavian and spent the next few centuries wanting to do the same to every Caesar Augustus that followed. They'd hated the 14th century the most, but in both a personal and professional sense, the whole of the Roman Empire ran a very close second.^{[return to text]}

Chapter Text

A long, long time ago:

“Oh, he will be distraught, won’t he,” Aziraphale had said.

“Hm?” Crowley asked.

They were in the valley of Megiddo, sharing a jug of something fermented and looking at the mountains. The people around them had fled the armies ahead of the battle and they were alone.

“David,” Aziraphale explained. “Over everything.”

“Poor bugger,” said Crowley. “S’already happened, yeah?”

“Saul is still up,” Aziraphale said. “But yes. Jonathan is—“

Jonathan was nothing of Heaven’s doing. None of what passed between him and David had been, and the love had shone off them, bright and warm. Beautiful.

“Hm,” said Crowley again. It was rather more non-committal than Aziraphale had been expecting from them.

“They loved each other very much,’ tried Aziraphale again. Perhaps he’d been too circumspect?

Crowley took another drink and said, curiously toneless, “I wouldn’t know about that.”

Aziraphale turned to face them then, confused. “What do you mean, you wouldn’t know about that?”

“That love business. Can’t see it,” they said. “Seems a bit of a bother, really.”

“A bit of a bother,” Aziraphale said, offended. “Love?”

Crowley shrugged and it was at this moment that Aziraphale realized two things: first, that Crowley, for all their wit and charm and friendliness was, in fact, utterly alien to Aziraphale’s understanding; and second was an overwhelming feeling of pity.

Something of these revelations must have shown on his face because Crowley tensed up and their expression went horribly stony for a moment before they said, “Right then, time I was on my way,” in a tone so falsely cheerful that it made Aziraphale ache to hear it.

And then they were gone.

The twenty second time:

“You know God exists!” Aziraphale threw up his hands. “How can you possibly—“

“Ah hah,” Crowley said, pointing at Aziraphale. “I know God exists. Can’t have faith in a thing you know. That’s the whole point of faith. Do you go round saying you believe in the sun? No, of course not.”

“If God exists,” said Aziraphale, through gritted teeth. “So must love.”

“Nope.”

“I can sense it!”

“You can sense something. I can’t. Subjective experience doesn’t prove the existence of a thing.”

“You are impossible,” Aziraphale said. “Go away. You are giving me a headache.”

The four hundred ninety-sixth time:

“What’s this all about then,” asked Crowley. Their hand was cool in Aziraphale’s, their fingers long and graceful.

“A metaphor,” Aziraphale said. He reached out, the tiniest of miracles, and pulled a piece of ice from where it had rested innocently as part of a glacier half a world away. He’d gotten a reprimand for making things, forming them up from raw fundament – “It’s limited, you know,” Sandalphon had said, pompous as anything – and took to transport for a great deal of what he wanted and simple recomposition where the things he wanted failed to exist. He set it on Crowley’s palm and closed their hand around it.

“Interesting,” said Crowley after a moment. They looked down at their hand, clasped in Aziraphale’s own. “Am I meant to be feeling something other than cold?”

“I saw a play,” Aziraphale said. Crowley nodded but didn’t look up and Aziraphale considered taking his hands away, the rush of embarrassment and familiar awkwardness making them tremble. “The Loves of Achilles.”

“Ah,” said Crowley. They pulled their hand back the tiniest bit, a test, and Aziraphale held fast, unthinking, and Crowley subsided. After a time they said, with the tiniest smidge of surprise, “It hurts.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale and let them go. “I’m sorry. I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

Crowley’s hand stayed closed around the ice.

The seven hundred seventy-seventh time:

They were very, very, very drunk.

“I used to know, I think,” Crowley said from where they lay on the ground, looking up at the stars. Their voice was thick with wine and what Aziraphale would call grief in himself, though he is certain that Crowley would deny it to their last breath.

“What?” asked Aziraphale. As an ethereal being, he was certain he couldn’t actually be exhausted but his body insisted that he was. He’d spent days and days casting miracles in the streets of Constantinople, banishing fleas and healing the sick who died anyway, despite all his efforts.

And then Crowley had been there, clean and whole and obscenely healthy, adorned like a wealthy albeit exhausted trader. They looked terrible, honestly, what could they have been doing and Crowley had frowned at him. “You shouldn’t be here,” they’d said.

“Where else would I possibly be?” Aziraphale had asked, gesturing at the piles of bodies. “Is there one single better place for an angel to be than in this—this—horror?”

“Anywhere but here,” answered Crowley, shortly. “Come on, then.”

And they’d hauled Aziraphale through the streets, not stopping even when Aziraphale batted at their arm and dragged his feet.

“Let go,” Aziraphale had shouted at him. “You rotten, foul—“

“Make me,” Crowley had said, not stopping at all. “No? Spent, are you? Don’t have the juice to smite me for my presumption?”

And the sad truth was that they were correct. Aziraphale stopped fighting and let himself fall, pulling Crowley down with him. “No,” he’d said. “I can’t leave them alone. They’re so afraid, Crowley, please—“

“You can’t be here, angel,” Crowley’d said, gentle as anything, drawing Aziraphale back up to his feet. “This is going to happen, however many miracles you throw at it.”

“You don’t know that,” Aziraphale said.

“Ask me why I’m here,” Crowley had said, climbing over Aziraphale's protest like they'd been waiting for it.

Aziraphale shook his head, drawing back as far as Crowley would let him. “You wouldn’t.”

“Escort job,” Crowley said. “Bringing round a very important personification.”

“No,” said Aziraphale. He’d done the same on occasion and hated it. It felt like cheating. What were people supposed to do against an embodiment of their own destruction?

“You can’t be here,” Crowley’d said again, implacable, and taken Aziraphale away.

It was one of the only times Aziraphale could remember sleeping. He hated it. And he hated Crowley for coming with wine and food and themself. He hated his body for aching. He hated all those lovely, irreplaceable people for dying. He said so, loudly, when Crowley bullied him out of the abandoned shed they’d taken refuge in.

“You don’t,” said Crowley. “Budge over.” They dropped down beside Aziraphale and handed him one of the jugs of wine and some of the bread.

“What’s Hell’s interest here?” asked Aziraphale. Crowley shrugged one shoulder and Aziraphale was abruptly, incandescently furious that they could be so unaffected. He threw the heel of bread at them and relished the tiny burst of satisfaction when Crowley started. “What was all this for?”

Crowley said nothing, eyes hidden behind dark lenses. Aziraphale saw himself reflected in them, barely a bright smudge in the dark. He wished to throw something else. He wished for the familiar weight of a sword in his hand, so soon after serving at Arthur’s table. He wished for a great many things, but manifested only one and hurled it at Crowley. The chunk of bread bounced off their shoulder and landed harmlessly in Crowley’s lap.

“Was it necessary that so many of them die? Was it needful? What part could Antonius, a delightful child, quite precocious, destined for great things in pottery I dare say, have played in thwarting the desires of Hell itself? Or Joannina, of the sublime poetry, you would have loved her verses, Crowley, if she hadn’t come over necrotic and died, not two weeks ago. I’m certain she was a great impediment to your schemes.”

Another chunk of bread, useless bloody thing. Ineffectual. It bounced off Crowley’s nose, knocking their lenses askew. Aziraphale reached out then, hooking a finger in the delicate metal temple and pulling the lenses off. He wanted to see the lack of sentiment in Crowley’s eyes, the demonic lack of regard for the fragility of life, anything at all except his own impotent reflection.

Crowley took the lenses back from Aziraphale’s hand, folding them carefully and setting them aside. They watched Aziraphale warily but their voice was gentle when they answered. “They don’t tell me, do they? Just a blast of information straight to the mind and off I go on a—what month is it now? Five? Six month tour of Byzantium, trailing around behind that one and making sure they don’t kill everyone ‘accidentally.’ For my money, Hell’s having a go at weakening the empire. Chaos and discord and whatnot.”

Aziraphale slumped. “Everywhere?”

Crowley nodded, solemn. “Rats,” they said. “In the grain.”

“Shit,” said Aziraphale. And they drank. And drank and drank.

It was at this point that they’d fallen over, shoulder to shoulder, the comforting blanket of three jugs of very strong wine blunting their normal edges.

“I can’t make it stop,” Aziraphale said. There had been weeping, at least a jug previous, and his face felt hot and had probably come over all blotchy and red.

“Of course not,” said Crowley. They hadn’t covered their eyes again and were staring, unblinking, at the stars. “You wouldn’t be you if you could.”

Aziraphale turned his head, feeling a bit wobbly. Crowley was right there. “Can you?” he asked.

Crowley frowned at nothing. “Can I make it stop for me or for you?”

“For me,” said Aziraphale.

Crowley turned to look at him then, eyes still somehow bright and clear and gold. They took Aziraphale’s hand, closing it into a fist and after a moment, he felt something achingly cold manifest there. “You can let this one go,” they said. “If you want to. If it’s no good for you to keep it.”

Aziraphale did want to. And he opened his hand to see a small piece of melting ice. “Would you?” he asked.

Crowley shook their head with the exaggerated care of the very drunk. “It burned away,” they said. “Nothing I could do. I think. I don’t remember.”

Aziraphale wanted to touch the downward curve of Crowley’s mouth. He wanted to steal away to some place where he could shed his mortal body with all its fluids and immediacy and tearing, awful sentiment. He wanted to ask about falling.

“Don’t,” said Crowley quietly.

In the end, Aziraphale only held Crowley’s hand in his until morning, ice melting between their palms.

The second to last time, not that either knows it:

“You think this is a good idea, do you?” asked Crowley.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Aziraphale, hand out and steady, waiting for Crowley.

“Best kind,” they said, “wouldn’t know what to do with a good idea anyway.”
Crowley took his hand.

It was something like dissolution and something like entanglement and a great deal like neither of those things at all: a call and response from the center of Aziraphale to someplace similar in Crowley; a harp arpeggio just out of tune echoed in a diminished triad; stars and stars and stars and the vastness between them; a blank page and the first drop of ink. For the tiniest of seconds, Aziraphale understood just how much they’d all lost in the fall, angels and demons both, and the understanding whirled away again leaving an ache behind Aziraphale’s eyes.

They balanced against each other, Crowley’s brightsharp mind winding around and around Aziraphale, curious and serpentine. He felt a flicker of something that could have been a snake’s tongue or possibly laughter, a feeling that said hello right down to his bones.

Lust, Aziraphale found and felt Crowley laugh, an incredulous really, angel? before they offer up a drum beat; the boy girl other half strip tease; a slow question shaped curl asking what the body was capable of, any body, their body. What do they like, they asked themselves, and searched out the answer everywhere they could.

Gluttony, Aziraphale found and fell into the grassiness of tea and the smooth bitter dark of melted chocolate, wine and coffee and whiskey and mead, a milkshake and absinthe and everything a body could drink and all of it tasted deliciously like smug satisfaction and spite. And under that, more fury and the dry parched feel of dust in their mouth. Oh, Aziraphale thought and made an effort, giving over the memory of yellowtail and garlic and jalapeno and yuzu, of figs and grapes and honeycomb, everything, the greatest hits, a single perfect bite of apple.

Greed, Aziraphale found and mine, Crowley thought, I want, I want (Aziraphale’s pleased smile at Hamlet, at Crowley’s indulgence, at crepes, at shared work, at a friend), I want (art and music and parks and gardens), I want, and every want was a lost piece of themselves. Mine, Crowley said again in the smooth, cool coils wrapped around Aziraphale’s self, and the word tasted like smoke.

Sloth, Aziraphale found and found the Arrangement with it. Efficient, Crowley objected, and gave him sunwarmed rocks and cool sheets and long drives with the windows down. Time and more time, making room for everything else that mattered more than Hell’s mandates. The back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop and the worn, familiar comfort of it all. Long lunches at the Ritz and rambling through St James.

Wrath, Aziraphale found and heard Crowley asking what it was all for, heard himself asking the same question, a plaintive echo, and felt the endless furious futility of receiving no answer, not knowing if it was Crowley’s or his own.

Envy, Aziraphale found and Crowley hissed at him. Showed him himself saying, “I’m astonished you can’t feel it," and felt himself in the vastness between the stars, tiny and insignificant and alone, the static of a detuned radio where he used to be.

Pride, Aziraphale found cementing together the whole of them, patchy and cracked as they were. A nebula, a motorway, an album of smiling faces, the dying fluorescent drone of the word traitor. Jobs well enough done, miracles and temptations grafted branch by branch onto the tree of their works.

Love, Aziraphale found growing in a walled garden, a riot of greenery tended by a determined and inexpert hand. For the first time since they’d started the switch, Aziraphale was alone in himself and wondered where Crowley had gone. A tendril of honeysuckle twined around his fingers.

“Hello, dear,” he said, “aren’t you lovely?” and was rewarded with a gentle squeeze and a rustle of leaves, the nearer flowers turning their faces to him.

There was no door. Ah, well, there hadn’t been a door in Eden either and he hadn’t let it stop him then. A passionflower vine wound itself around his ankle and hops joined the honeysuckle on his hand, tugging lightly at his wrist. “Help me?” he asked.
The rustle of rapidly growing vines and stalks climbing the wall in front of him was suspiciously reminiscent of scales over stone.

Love, Aziraphale found at the heart of it all, and knew Crowley couldn’t sense it in themself.

There was something incredibly unsettling about seeing himself lounging indecently in a chair and making his steady way through an excellent shiraz, startled out of a truly appalling cooking sherry. Crowley'd already undone the bowtie and the top buttons of his shirt and Aziraphale wanted to look away from the exposed length of his own neck.

"You think it'll work?" Crowley asked, addressing the ceiling. They haven't looked at Aziraphale once since the two of them had switched, somewhere between the 2016 zibibbo and the vin de constance, and haven’t stopped petting themselves besides. A slow stroke down then up again, against what nap remains of the velvet of Aziraphale’s vest; slipping the buttons and tracing the repair Aziraphale had made to the stitching around the buttonhole going on thirty years past.

"I don't see why it wouldn't," Aziraphale said. He felt as if he was back, oh, a hundred or more years, a memory of layers of silk and linen cool and heavy against his skin. Under his skin. There were flowers, he thought, but the memory slipped away.

It had been a worry, of course, that the switch wouldn't have worked at all. That some element of their essential natures would overcome the form -- that their function would bleed through in some way. But no, Crowley's body carried with it a serpent in all its bone and muscle and sinew; it twined itself around and through his eyes and wound around the boundaries of Aziraphale’s self. It had been trying to slip free of his hold on it for the last bottle of wine and he wondered how often it tried that with Crowley.

Aziraphale looked at his own body, draped messily across the chair, leeched of color except for the shimmer of gold at the base of his throat. He closed his eyes and could still see the shape of himself, the movement as Crowley looked at him, finally, finally, and he wondered what Crowley saw with Aziraphale’s eyes.

It had been enough to know that Crowley looked like him and that they both looked like the humans they surrounded themselves with. That they were both a reasonable facsimile of God's image. He hadn't thought. And now he had nothing but questions.

“That’s not what I asked, is it?” Crowley said, looking away again and gesturing with their free hand. “Do you, Aziraphale, principality, angel of the Eastern Gate, thwarter of wiles and apocalypses, et cetera, think it will work? Really?”

Crowley glowed against the darkness behind Aziraphale’s closed eyes.

“Yes,” he said firmly. Was this how it was all the time? he wondered. The constant impinging on the senses, the curious flatness of the air against his skin? He thought he could be in another room and know where Crowley was just by the prickle of warmth from their direction. He couldn’t not know. Opening his eyes helped a little. “Do you believe me?”

Crowley covered their eyes with their arm but didn't bother hiding the smirk. “No, of course not, you think all sorts of things are true.”

“You could have a little faith,” Aziraphale said, trying for lightness. The serpent moved. “Trust me."

The sibilants were perhaps a tad longer than they should be.

Crowley sat up then. “Hmm,” they said while Aziraphale shook his head against the dizziness of seeing and feeling the movement in the shift of heat and air and the warmth clinging to the cushions Crowley was just lounging against.

“Is it like this all the time?” Aziraphale asked. His tongue felt wrong and there was rather more in the way of hissing than Aziraphale was entirely comfortable with.

“You’ll want to sober up,” was the only answer Crowley gave him. He supposed that was answer enough.